SEO and Carrot website platform
Member since 2019 · 17 posts · 2 votes
What is your experience and opinion of the carrot platform? Thinking of going this route to build out a buying and selling websites but am looking for a few people who either know someone who has had experience with it or they themselves have used it for at least a year and are willing to share details with us. Obviously someone who used it and followed instructions on how to set it up properly and invested in doing all the tasks/procedures to set it up accordingly over time. I've read some online reviews but there just didnt seem like there were that many available.
My 2 cents... I've had a Carrot site since 2018. "SEO optimized" does not mean it will do anything for you unless you put content out there either on your site, or that backlinks back to your site. It has to be content that people are actually interested in and clicking on/interacting with. Just having a site really doesn't do anything for you without quality, relevant content that people are actually searching for. Carrot has a ton of pre-made blog posts that are supposed to help with content, but there are so many customers that use the exact same blog posts that it nullifies the effectiveness. Original content that people will actually consume is the way.
PPC is the fast, expensive way to rank highly, SEO is the long game: labor intensive, but worth it over time once you get traction and start ranking high organically.
My 2 cents... I've had a Carrot site since 2018. "SEO optimized" does not mean it will do anything for you unless you put content out there either on your site, or that backlinks back to your site. It has to be content that people are actually interested in and clicking on/interacting with. Just having a site really doesn't do anything for you without quality, relevant content that people are actually searching for. Carrot has a ton of pre-made blog posts that are supposed to help with content, but there are so many customers that use the exact same blog posts that it nullifies the effectiveness. Original content that people will actually consume is the way.
PPC is the fast, expensive way to rank highly, SEO is the long game: labor intensive, but worth it over time once you get traction and start ranking high organically.
Owen, your comment is helpful and appreciated. Thank you. I see you're a lender? How is the Omaha market. I've visited Offut AFB years ago (many times) when i was in the navy.
Hey @Tommy Harper
Full disclosure: I work for Carrot. I also have Carrot website and primarily focus on SEO.
I'll start by saying that Carrot isn't for everyone (and that's okay). But we are proud of what we have built.
Hopefully, you can find some more Carrot customers (or non-customers) to share their experiences. But just wanted to hit on a couple of things to help you with your research.
We view SEO as 3 distinct and critical parts (each with its deeper nuance)
1. Speed
2. SEO
3. Conversion
Speed
Carrot has invested quite a bit of money in our servers to be lighting fast and also in our websites doing some complicated stuff to ensure your website loads for users (computer and mobile) because Google has made that clear in terms of ranking a website. An example of this would be loading the first view (form) and loading stuff as a user decides to go down the page. You can use a tool like https://pagespeed.web.dev/ to check out the page speed of some Carrot websites and our competitors. Speed will slow down the more tracking codes and big images your stuff on your site. We've published some speed tests on our blog and Carrot usually performs at the top.
One alternative is self-hosting which can give you speed but usually comes with a dedicated server and those are costly (I know because I host personal non-RE blogs on them). Talking thousands of dollars a year.
SEO
SEO can be complex - but we try to give you a leg up by giving you pages that are SEO optimized and inter-linked when you create a site. Of course, you can optimize from there based on your market and real estate strategy. I know of a couple customers who are doing really well with some niche situations like selling a house in retirement. We have no shortage of content and guidance in our platform to help you figure out the work that is required with SEO. But make no mistake, you will either need to roll up your sleeves or outsource the work. But we try our best to guide you along the way and not make the website a stumbling block for having awesome SEO.
Conversion
You asked about SEO but Google can tell when a website has quality content and a user converts on the website. We focus heavily on split testing to ensure our websites have the best-performing elements. I common mistake we see is having a really big complicated form that a user doesn't want to fill out. We keep ours front and center and simple with a clever 2 step process. This increases conversion. Another mistake we often see is websites that don't consider a mobile user and how they would interact with a site. We take a lot of time and care into testing and thinking about those things so you don't have to.
*Final thoughts*
Carrot is a tool. The more time/money you spend to get good with the tool the more results you can achieve with it. In terms of SEO, if you Google "sell my house fast" + any market in the US you will likely find a handful of Carrot websites in the top 1-5 spots. In fact, I know several markets that #1, #2, #3 are all Carrot websites for a bunch of competitive keywords. So the results somewhat speak for themselves. But don't want to oversell the fact that SEO takes time, money and experience. So just make sure you know what you want from your website performance.
Happy to answer any other questions.
@Owen Dashner, That was a really thoughtful and helpful response. I was just skimming responses and found that very interesting and insightful. I've learned something today. Thanks for. sharing that.